With the New Year recently upon us, many people have embarked on new fitness goals. Research has shown that fitness- based smartphone apps can be beneficial for motivation and social connection. For...

REVIEW OF THREE SMARTPHONE APPLICATIONS
Table of Contents
Section 1    3
Lifesum – Diet Plan, Macro Calculator & Food Diary    3
Runkeeper    4
What’s Up    5
Section 2    5
Critical Evaluation of Lifesum    5
Critical Evaluation of Runkeeper    7
Critical Evaluation of What’s Up    8
References    11
Section 1
Lifesum – Diet Plan, Macro Calculator & Food Diary
Figure 1: Screenshots of Lifesum Application
(Source: Learner)
Lifesum is a die-based smartphone application developed for both Android and IOS platforms. The application offers its features free of cost and requires sign up process for data record maintenance. The application however, offers paid services in the form of premium subscription. The application tracks the user provided data and their aim and with the use of the collected data and the application of proven algorithms formulates specified diet plans, food preferences, caloric count of foods and tracks regular activities, based on GPS based sensory movement. The awareness of a person’s health is the central idea of the smartphone application (Lifesum 2019).
Runkeepe
Figure 2: Screenshots of Runkeeper Application
(Source: Learner)
Runkeeper, as the name suggests is a physical activity smartphone application, which is available for both Android and IOS devices. The application uses the built in GPS sensor in the smartphone of the users, to track the movement of the persons in a given time and based on the data provided to the database, performance graphs of physical activities are generated, making users aware of their physical activities. The application provides users activity goals for motivation and offers activity data sharing with prefe
ed friends using the same application. The application’s main objective is to offer proper tracking and offering motivation for more physical activity encouragement (Runkeeper 2019).
What’s Up
Figure 3: Screenshots of What’s Up Application
(Source: Learner)
What’s Up is a completely free mental health and stress prevention smartphone application available in Android Play Store and IOS I Tunes Store for the users. The application does not require sign up or log in process, therefore, it can offer its services immediately to persons, who is facing mental crisis. The application uses psychological techniques, motivational na
ation and very intuitive mind distraction processes to divert the mind of the users at the time of mental stress. The use of engagement and distraction technique is the core strategy the application uses (What’s Up? 2019).
Section 2
Critical Evaluation of Lifesum
Lifesum, as a dietary smartphone application proves its worth as it tends to abide the norms of the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating. The application offers a significant portion of its services to the smartphone users free. However, the majority of the services, which caters to the highest degree of importance to the dietary guidance and regulations, are retained only for the premium service availing users, which again is a paid service. The offering of most of the major features of the application in the form of paid services makes it inaccessible to a large portion of the Australian population, undermining the aspect of its reach and effectiveness. It is seen that the application formulates diets for persons after collecting data about their height, weight, age and gender; however, it does not take note of a user suffering from diabetes. As mentioned by Burch et al. (2019), prior to offering a diet plan for a person, the aspect of diabetes must be taken under consideration, as the consumed food casts significant impact on the health of a person suffering with diabetes and...